Chapter 182 New Case

Chapter 182: A New Case

After schools at all levels reopened, Shen Qingye's work also stabilized.

Recently, there hadn’t been many cases in the team, giving them some downtime. However, being idle for too long got boring. After sitting dutifully in the office for a week, Shen Qingye couldn’t take it anymore and started sifting through old unsolved cases.

Zhou Qiming saw this sometimes and was amazed. “You know, ever since Qingye joined us, our team’s unsolved case rate has dropped big time.”

It wasn’t just their group—sometimes even Teams One and Two would ‘borrow’ Shen Qingye for assistance. Every time she stepped in, there were results, winning over even the usually gruff Captain Yang and Captain Ma, who treated her with unusual warmth. Zhou Qiming occasionally witnessed this and was amazed.

But she really had the chops. If nothing else, just the fact that no new cold cases piled up after she joined said it all.

Even the way they addressed her had changed—from the initial “Xiao Shen” to “Qingye.” While this reflected closeness, it was also an acknowledgment of her capabilities.

Shen Qingye smiled but didn’t downplay herself, taking Zhou Qiming’s praise in stride.

After all, you’ve got to respect yourself before others will.

Shen Qingye had always understood this well and acted accordingly.

With almost no backlog of cold cases in the past six months, Shen Qingye dug further back and eventually came across a seriously weird case.

This case occurred during last year’s Spring Festival. Ding Dayong, a villager from Shanghe Village in Shoushan County, came back for the holidays to honor his ancestors. Unexpectedly, he noticed something odd about his grandfather’s grave—the dirt on top didn’t match the rest. Upon closer inspection, the soil wasn’t compact at all but rather loose.

His grandfather had been in the ground for over ten years, and no one in the family had disturbed the grave in all those years. Moreover, Ding’s family had been working away from home and rarely visited. Even during Qingming Festival, relatives just handled the grave-sweeping for them.

During routine grave-sweeping, people would only burn offerings in front of the tomb—who’d mess with the grave itself?

At first, the relatives suspected some mischievous child had tampered with the grave and grilled the kids with threats, but no one admitted to it. Ding Dayong felt something was off. Matters involving the deceased and ancestors always carried a sense of taboo. The more he looked at the grave, the more uneasy he became. In the end, ignoring everyone’s protests, he dug it up.

And inside, they found the body of an adult male.

This was a major incident. The whole village was in an uproar, and they immediately reported it to the police. The case was escalated through local authorities and eventually handed over to the Municipal Bureau, assigned to Captain Ma’s team.

After taking the case, Captain Ma promptly went to the village to investigate. However, nobody in the village knew the dead guy. In fact, there had been no recent disappearances in the village at all.

Something felt off, so Captain Ma expanded the search radius. With the help of the local police station, they learned that in Rongshu Village, about five or six kilometers from Shanghe Village, there had been a recent disappearance.

The missing person was Deng Hailong, a 32-year-old man who had vanished about half a month before the incident. According to villagers, Deng Hailong had always been idle, never holding a proper job even at his age. He often stole—sometimes a chicken from one household, sometimes fish from another. The Deng family, however, was a big deal in the village, and Deng Hailong’s father still held some influence. Since the stolen goods were never of significant value, people generally tolerated it.

By the time Deng Hailong’s father reported him missing, he had already been gone for five or six days. Initially, his father assumed his no-good son had run off to scam people somewhere else again. Though angry, he didn’t pay much attention. But after five or six days without a trace—something that had rarely happened before—Deng Hailong’s mother grew worried and went to ask around among the families he usually hung out with. After two days of searching, no one claimed to have seen him.

The Dengs freaked out and called the cops. The police searched for a while but found no leads, suspecting he might have left the area on his own. After all, he was a grown man in his thirties—nobody could stop him if he took off.

The Deng family naturally refused to believe this, but with no other clues and the police too busy to dedicate resources indefinitely to searching for an adult man, the matter was temporarily shelved.

Then, when the body was discovered in Xiahe Village, forensic analysis determined the deceased was a man around thirty years old, with a time of death roughly six to eight days prior.

Comparing this with the earlier disappearance, the police station recalled Deng Hailong’s case and found that everything matched. They brought the Deng family in to identify the body.

Deng’s mom passed out the second she saw the body, while his father staggered, looking decades older in an instant.

Thus, it was confirmed—the deceased was undoubtedly Deng Hailong.

But then another question arose. Rongshu Village was five or six kilometers from Shanghe Village, and the Deng family had no ties to Shanghe Village. Why would Deng Hailong be there?

After interrogating Deng Hailong’s usual companions, Captain Ma learned that since they couldn’t easily steal in their own village, they often targeted neighboring ones. Shanghe Village had been on their list, though they hadn’t acted yet. Unexpectedly, Deng Hailong had gone ahead alone.

With this testimony, Captain Ma speculated that Deng Hailong might have been caught stealing from a household, leading to a confrontation with the homeowner. Things might’ve gotten physical—forensics found a blunt force trauma on the back of the victim’s head—resulting in Deng Hailong’s death. The homeowner, to conceal the murder, then buried the body in the grave.

Their reasoning made sense, but when they actually went to investigate, they encountered difficulties.

Every household in the village insisted they didn’t know Deng Hailong and had never been robbed. Captain Ma and his team had no choice but to go door to door asking questions. However, on one hand, too much time had passed—even if there had been traces, they would have long been cleaned up. On the other hand, the rural area was covered in heavy dust and dirt, which further hindered their investigation.

After taking on the case, Captain Ma and his team spent over a month conducting thorough investigations, trying various approaches and even looking into the neighboring villages of Rongshu Village and Shanghe Village. Yet, they still found no substantial leads.

As time dragged on, Captain Ma grew frustrated. Unable to keep dedicating resources to this case indefinitely, he had no choice but to shelve it.

Until now, when Shen Qingye came across it.